How to Build Lasting Customer Relationships

GEORGIANA LAUDI ON HOW TO BUILD LASTING CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS AN INTERVIEW WITH RACHEL KLINE ON MEDIUM

Somewhere around 2008 I discovered Twitter, and it rocked my world.

I began leading a local community and organizing free events for women in tech.

Leading this community helped to establish myself, my network, and my credibility. So much so that I was able to quit my full time job and began freelancing fulltime in the tech & startup space.

I realized that if I could operationalize the process of helping customers reach their goals, we’d reach ours. And we did. The following year, we grew revenue nearly 900%.

I quickly became overwhelmed with demand from SaaS founders and execs desperate to find marketers who’d weathered the journey from startup to scaleup.

Why “forget the funnel”? Because the traditional concept of a “marketing funnel” has no place in recurring revenue business models like SaaS.

The concept of a marketing funnel only accounts for a customer searching for and purchasing a new solution — but to be successful, recurring revenue-based businesses need customers to continue paying month after month, year after year.

If your business runs on recurring revenue, it’s a serious mistake to think about marketing as something that stops when someone signs up.

When you have a strong foundational understanding of what matters to your best customers and you’ve mapped out their experience into key milestones and KPIs, then you have the perfect tool for your team to continue to build on and update over time.